My girlfriend wants me to stop writing

"Where would you put it?" I looked up from the page to see her standing over me. <br><br>"I'll put it up, but you'd have to promise me not to throw it away." She put her hand on the back of my head as if I was a dog and I felt the familiar exhaustion wash over me. We'd had the same fight countless times before.<br><br>"Alright, you can have it. But he isn't who you think he is." She folded up the papers and left me to sulk. I'd long since given up trying to convince them that he wasn't a monster, he was just a man with flaws. He loved me as best he could. <br><br>She'd never understand.<br><br>We'd never have the same fight again, because she was dead just a few weeks later. <br><br>I still remember the terrified sound that escaped her throat when they laid out her broken body on the kitchen floor, still remember the stench of the cooler they used to preserve her corpse. I was too numb to feel anything. <br><br>The night she died I woke up with a start to the sound of rustling in our kitchen. It was pitch black and I'd lost all sense of time. <br><br>As I went through the motions of disposing of her body I couldn't help but think that he'd won, that he'd always been right and I'd been the fool. I felt the familiar exhaustion creeping up my spine, a numb fog infecting my brain. <br><br>But then I thought about it. Really thought about it. <br><br>I thought about the black eyes I gave her, the bruises on my skin, the words I'd whispered to my child that I could never undo. There's no worse feeling than knowing you're not as good as the people around you.<br><br>I thought about the day she was born, and how I'd looked at the innocent creature in my arms and promised her she would have the best life possible. <br><br>I thought about the day they found her, and wondered how long it would take them to find me. <br><br>Then I thought about him. <br><br>I thought about the way he'd touched my skin, and the way I'd learned to touch my child. I thought about the way he spoke to me, and the way I spoke to my child. <br><br>More than that, I thought about his stories, and the way he spoke about my mother. Such a beautiful, worthy woman. For years I thought of her as I thought of my child, as a being who deserved the world. <br><br>I thought about the bones they found out in the desert. <br><br>My mother's bones.<br><br>I thought about my child, her twisted body bleeding out in my kitchen.<br><br>I thought about my father, and I thought about my stories. <br><br>I thought about my sister and the way she'd screamed as she'd burned. I thought about how the heat of the flames had disfigured her skin long before the skin got hot enough to slough off, and wondered if she'd been dead before the fire consumed her. <br><br>I thought about how he'd been so wrong, and I thought about what I'd done.